Wire, cable, conduit, and armored cable are typically loaded on reels to be transported. Such reels usually include a drum upon which the wire, cable, conduit, or armor cable is wound around and two flanges flanking either end of the drum. Most wire, cable, conduit, and armored cable are associated with a bend factor which indicates the maximum each can bend before damage occurring. Thus, the outside diameter (OD) of the drum of the reel used to load the wire, cable, conduit, and/or armored cable is dictated by the bend factor of the particular wire, cable, conduit, and/or armored cable to be loaded. In some circumstances, the bend factor of a wire, for example, is twenty-two times the OD of the wire. Therefore, when selecting a reel on which to load the wire, the OD of the drum of the reel must be at least twenty-two times the OD of the wire in order to protect against damaging the wire when it is wound upon the drum.
In order to accommodate a large variety of ODs associated with wire, cable, conduit, and armored cable, reel suppliers are required to stock an inventory of reels having drums with different ODs, or suppliers have to use reels with larger drum ODs than required by a particular wire, for example, which unnecessarily drives up the overall dimensions of the reels. The larger a reel is, the more costly it is to transport the reel from one location to the next. In particular, only a small number of larger reels can fit on a flatbed truck for transportation, and larger reels often exceed the maximum height limits set by the Department of Transportation for vehicles traversing highways and require special escorts, all of which equate to higher transportation costs.
Once a reel has been paid off at a site and is ready to be transported back to the reel supplier, often only a limited number of reels can be returned on a flatbed truck because of the size of the reels. Therefore, multiple trips to return paid-off reels may have to be taken which also increases the transportation costs.